A Culinary Departure

Zaytinya takes adventurous diners on a tasty trip to the Mediterranean.

By Deborah Ackerman

Zaytinya, which means “olive oil” in Turkish, is the latest brainchild of executive chef and co-owner José Andrés, the culinary force behind popular local restaurants Jaleo and Café Atlántico. This time, however, Andrés leaves Spain and Latin America behind, and, with head chef Jorge Chicas, brings culinary travelers to the Mediterranean, offering a menu influenced by Greek, Turkish, and Lebanese cuisine.

Though there's much to savor at Zaytinya, the first and most striking feature is its atmosphere. With arching walls and ceilings, tall lattice framework, and glass exteriors, one might think the restaurant's architecturally impressive design would be intimidating. And yet, it somehow manages to be just the opposite. A warm color scheme of clean white, subtly blended with rich blues and touches of gold, gives the sense of sitting in an outdoor restaurant on the Mediterranean on a summer day. It's the kind of place you want to sit for a while, just to soak up the atmosphere and scene-watch.

Zaytinya's layout offers many vantage points from which to do so. There is the long bar, partially shrouded from the dining area, where thrift store hipsters, euro-styled sophisticates, and the average Joe and Josephine Businessperson put aside their respective attitudes and mingle together in harmony -- perhaps due to the influence of Zaytinya's creative cocktails and Greek, Turkish, and Lebanese wines. For those looking for something a little more intimate, one side of the L-shaped dining area features a fireplace and open view of the kitchen activity. On the other side, shameless people-watchers can feast not only on their meals but on a wide-open view of all those dining around them, the street scene outside, and every person who makes his or her entrée through the front doors.

Through all of this, the well-trained waitstaff moves quickly and attentively, bringing food and drink at just the right moment, always ready to offer information and suggestions about the menu. Zaytinya's menu has achieved a good balance -- while Jaleo boasts a large tapas menu and a much smaller entrée list, and Café Atlántico has just the opposite, Zaytinya offers a good quantity of both.

Full entrées range from the hearty and exotic, like roasted chicken with onions, pomegranate juice, and a walnut sauce, to the lighter and more familiar, such as a falafel sandwich. Zaytinya's extensive menu of “little dishes,” or “mezzes,” accommodates vegetarians with more than 25 vegetarian choices. The mezze menu also provides a blend of the familiar and the unusual; choose the standard hommos, baba ghannouge, and shish taouk (chicken kabobs) options, or for the more adventurous, the avgotaraho (grey mullet roe, which the menu proclaims “a delicacy in Greece”). These thinly sliced, salty pieces of bright orange roe, surrounded by an edible vegetable wax, are of a texture and flavor you're unlikely to experience elsewhere in the city, and worth a try if the general idea of caviar and preserved fish doesn't scare you.

Other interesting choices include the savory havuç körftesi (fritters made with carrot, apricot and pine nuts, in a pistachio sauce) and a flavorful salad of orange, red onion, pine nuts, black olives, mint and “orange flower dressing.” Also try the garides saganaki, a flavorful blend of shrimp, tomatoes, onions, and cheese.

Taking Zaytinya on its own merits, its atmosphere, service, and food is commendable. But, because of its association with Jaleo and Café Atlántico, it will inevitably be compared to its sister restaurants. Each of the three offers excellent selections. In both atmosphere and service, Zaytinya has exceeded its predecessors, but kinks remain in Zaytinya's menu. For instance, the spanakopita, ordered by a table of three and at a price of $5.95, arrived with its fillo toasted to a very dark brown, almost over-cooked, and more oily than necessary. The portion size consisted of one sole piece, about the size and shape of a ladyfinger -- hardly enough to satisfy one person, let alone a group.

Another disappointment was the yumurtali pide, a thin bread covered with ground lamb and spices, baked with a layer of egg on top. In direct opposition to the spanakopita, it was a large dish, hanging over both sides of the plate. But the bread dough was visibly burned and too crisp to cut or break conveniently, the egg topping was still questionably liquid, and the taste, overall, not as flavorful as it should be.

Still just a few months old, Zaytinya has not had the time its two related restaurants have had to test and perfect. But considering its newness, it is already getting a great deal right. As the restaurant progresses, it's likely that any remaining minor quirks will be ironed out, and that diners will find their journey to the Mediterranean as refreshing and exotic as possible without a passport.

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